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Local traffic schemes – public meeting date announced

A public meeting for local residents on all the proposed traffic schemes in our area will be held at the Lumen Church on Tavistock Place at 7pm on Monday 19th September.

As discussed at the Marchmont Association AGM this week, we had been hoping to arrange a public meeting to discuss the Tavistock Place trial, with the Council, in late June. However it’s now crystal clear that LB Camden and TfL have bitten off more than they can easily chew with all these inter-locking schemes and want more time to analyse traffic data and look at consultation responses.

Rather than being just about the Tavistock Place trial, the public meeting will now be about all of the Council’s current proposals – the North-South Cycle Super Highway on Judd St, the Midland Road plans, the Brunswick Square scheme that involves the closure of Lansdowne Terrace to cars and the final Tavistock/Torrington scheme which will be put out to public consultation in September. Traffic data for Torrington / Tavistock is currently being collected – you’ll have seen the cables in the streets no doubt – but the Council says it needs until September to analyse the results.

Meanwhile, as we reported at the AGM this week, the Marchmont Association wrote to Camden at the end of last month, asking for an update on the Cartwright Gardens traffic plans. At one time these were considered integral to the overall Garden Halls development, and were expected to be in place by the time the Halls are up and running, in September. But the reply we received clearly indicates these plans have also joined the lengthening queue of local traffic schemes awaiting decision. According to LB Camden some highway works are still planned for the next few months. These, though, will only involve repaving the footways around the perimeter of the Halls and the construction of a raised table on Cartwright Gardens to provide step free access between the Halls and the gardens’ entrance.

So no progress towards a decision, for or against, on the possibility that Cartwright Gardens could be made one-way northbound, with a southbound cycle lane. That will now wait “until the Torrington/Tavistock trial cycling scheme has been concluded” and “we … understand how the North/South Cycle Superhighway proposals for Judd Street and Midland Road will proceed”